The subject of this invention is an hygiene instrument, also called hereinafter polisher, for removing stains, cleaning and polishing the surface of the teeth and/or composite materials of dental fillings, the instrument or polisher being designed to be used by private individuals i.e., for home care as well as by practitioners of dental art.
One knows that correct maintenance of the teeth consists of daily elimination of dental plaque and food debris from the surface of the teeth and from the spaces between the teeth by a careful brushing, followed by the use of instruments used only once, such as toothpicks made of wood, plastic, or bird feathers; single tufted brushes; bottle brushes or dental floss.
However these instruments are not satisfactory.
The sticks, commonly called toothpicks, are made of wood or bird feathers and are not hygienic, they break easily, and they are traumatic to the gums; if made of plastic they are simultaneously too thick and too flexible and don't easily pass between the teeth.
Dental floss, made of silk or nylon materials, is efficient but has problems in crossing the point of contact of the teeth if these latter are too close from each other, and it shreds and remains stuck between the teeth, provoking immediate discomfort. The small brushes and the bottle brushes cannot be used when the spaces between the teeth are narrow, and their high cost is an obstacle to their regular use.
Dental professionals, dentists and hygienists must eliminate deposits, stains, and discolorations of the tooth surface and have, for the cleaning and polishing of the teeth and fillings made of composite materials, a vast array of instruments and devices, such as rotating brushes, instruments to remove tartar, ultrasonic instruments, air-polishers, or also abrasive strips or discs
However, these instruments present the following drawbacks:
The rotating brushes, used with a cleaning powder, possess a very significant abrasive power that leads to excessive abrasion of the raised tooth surfaces. Furthermore, they cannot reach the interdental spaces to remove stains and deposits.
The instruments made of stainless steel that remove tartar only act at their points of contact with the tooth and are time and attention demanding, which leads to an elevated cost for a well done job.
Ultrasonic instruments have an end that is too large to go into small fractures and most of the time they are painful so that an anesthetic injection in the gum of the patient is rendered necessary.
Air polishers, which work like a micro-sandblaster by projecting a powder at a supersonic speed, unpolish the enamel, and consequently require a careful repolishing of the teeth with another otherwise adapted powder because in the absence of such a repolishing the surface of the teeth very quickly retarnishes. They are also rather painful in contact with gums.
Abrasive strips, made of fabric or plastic covered with an abrasive glue, introduced between the teeth and moved in a backwards and forwards movement are supposed to polish the proximal sides of the teeth, which requires the practician to hold the bands between the two fingers at each end in the oral cavity: this uncomfortable position does not allow one to correctly guide the strip to make it to conform to the shape of the proximal surface of the tooth. In addition, during this movement, if this extremely fine strip comes into contact with the gums, it can cut them like a razor and furthermore the strip loses its abrasive coat very quickly, which causes it to unglue itself while crossing over the contact point of the teeth if the teeth are sharp and/or very close from each other.
The abrasive disks, mounted on rotating instruments, are disks of a small diameter made of a plastic material covered with an abrasive material which can cut the gums and cannot penetrate the space between the teeth.
Finally, in a dental office, the difficulty, during the finishing and polishing of fillings made of a composite material, rests in the creation of a composite-tooth seal without excess while being perfectly polished. There still is a problem of access and of instrumentation more or less imperfectly adapted and not giving total satisfaction.